Two weeks had passed since I had opened the mines and all the basic amenities needed for the dungeon town were more or less completed. That included guild houses for each organisation with plans to expand to proper headquarters in the future, town hall, nature temple, several inns and barracks for the blackguards.

It was a mess of different styles and conflicting tastes with buildings shaped out of living wood by elves, burrows hiding luxurious homes constructed by druids and towering stone constructions enchanted by earth mages yet it had its own unique charm. After all, it was my own town.

Townhall main function besides hosting council meeting was an entire floor dedicated only to quest postings and acquiring resources brought from the dungeon by the adventurers for a fixed, regulated and fair price. Usually, guild halls would have those but here with three guilds cooperating this solution seemed the most straightforward. It was possible to get a better price from the various merchants slowly showing up in the city but you would need to spend the time to visit several of them as almost all either specialised or changed prices based on their current stockpile.

The other surprise was nature temple as I was sure druids were more likely to grow a grove. Areth explained that it was easier for adventurers to buy supplies and get healing in the temple and the druids didn’t get annoyed by improper conduct in their sacred groves. Both sides won and as a bonus, it was less likely the church would be build due to competition, at least in the beginning as my fame grew we were sure to see cathedral constructed at some point.

I was also getting more and more guests with mine being more popular simply as it gave better rewards compared to my standard floors. Nicolas advised waiting before reconstructing and creating garden until more people showed up due to mana needed for day-to-day operational costs. I was yet to tell him that was not an issue due to Grootslangs but it proved beneficial anyway as I observed normal adventurers’ behaviours compared to guild elites and it gave me time to finish quite a few ecosystems simulations.

Even with their enormous benefits almost none of the species would work in a dungeon without modifications or few further simulations to refine the species in very narrow direction. Nothing compared to me directly altering mobs and was absolutely useless for bosses nonetheless it was a great treasure-trove of ideas and inspiration and I could do both simultaneously.

I was actually planning on doing a similar setup to the mine for the garden which not only would be a huge waste and in bad taste but it would make absolutely no sense. The first attempt was to use Advanced Concept Visualization but the amount of mana needed was mindboggling, I doubted if completely draining Nicolas few times would be enough, not that it was a feasible solution. In the end, I managed to somehow fuse three floors into one massive level with just three “rooms” and handcrafted all the plants. With all that done the sub-dungeon was smart enough to mix thing up occasionally while maintaining overall design. First was a huge cave being mostly weakened howlers, screamers and spore mushrooms, nothing lethal really and third of them were to attack only when they sensed someone started collecting resources nearby. I wanted to startle collectors to either ruin or damage mushrooms they were trying to get, mostly to include at least some challenge instead of giving resources for free and of course, that meant only the most common mushrooms were available in this cave.

Next was a corridor with nine guardian centipedes, two elites and one champion backed by new light centipede capable of healing allies and blinding foes. The room would reset every thirty minutes and if all mobs weren’t dead, it additionally spawned one guardian, one elite and one light centipede. Collectors could either hire adventurers to keep the corridor clear at all times or ask them to clear it couple times a day. Given the challenge, I was sure all gatherers would have to pitch in and employ elite team as those usually available as bodyguards wouldn’t manage on their own.

The true wonder was waiting in the third room if the gigantic cave easily double the size of all three mine levels added together could be called a room. The entire ceiling was inscribed with light runes simulating day and night.

It was separated into three sections by two artificial rivers with the lake and tiny island in the middle. Although garden should contain plants I decided to cultivate a “brand” and made anything worthy of collecting a mushroom. Due to the amount of available space, I hid the mushrooms among ordinary grass, flowers and trees and that wasn’t the only thing hidden as I decided against placing chests in the open this time.

The first section contained potion ingredients of tiers one to four and I allowed Areth to decide the distribution and it proved to be a stroke of genius. I was not scolded for whole two days. Anyway, she decided to make 50% of the mushrooms low tier one, 25% upper tier one and 20% being tier two. The remaining 5% was randomly split between tiers three and four, I just had to make sure the later would never exeed two percent.

Another brilliant idea of hers was to change how fast the mushrooms would regrow depending on how well it was picked. If just pulled out carelessly it would take up to five days to appear again. The more skilfully it was performed then the quicker and closer to original location it would appear. If someone managed to do it perfectly, collecting only essential parts and leaving the rest preserved not only it would grow back in the same spot it would take only two to six hours depending on the rarity.

The rivers could be crossed using three bridges that would change it locations every other day and to spice things up I decided to put special kind of underwater mushroom at random locations. Each type corresponded to every other ingredient present in the first section but would be 30% more potent.

The second area hid catalyst mushrooms based on the plants the guilds provided me or the ones I created by modifying the results of my simulations. As I was sure none or only a few of those mushrooms were present outside of my dungeon it could increase the number of people I could syphon mana off and more food was never a bad thing.

While catalysts in the second area could be used to strengthen the potions by either increasing potency, or modify minor parameters like making it heal more per second but shorten the overall duration the third area offered more attractive options.

The one I was sure to cause the most stir was combination reagent that allowed to combine two potions into one if the proper recipe was found the final product would have the full effect of two potions but would require fewer ingredients. However; in the dungeon when one second could spell the difference between life and death such potion would truly shine.

The other reagent I was proud of was actually a result of my mistake. I forgot to remove negative side-effects of few mushrooms and once again if proper procedure was followed potion made using them would sometimes be even five times as strong with no change in base price. The only downside if two were consumed in quick succession or more than four-five times a day then side effects were a sight to behold.

The last category present in the third area was enhanced reagents which strengthened one aspect but without sacrificing other parameters as would happen with those available in the second area.

The island in the middle of the central lake was where the boss of a kind grew. It was a colony of blood-red spore mushrooms that was absolutely lethal to anyone bellow legendary rank. They would release all it spores only once a day either when attacked or an hour after light from the runes was switched off. The spores would reach the entire cave and would take two hours to dissipate. As the “day” in the cave was 15 hours long and it took at least 6 hours to reach the third area it was quite an efficient way to ensure the rarest mushrooms would remain appropriately rare. As an added obstacle teleportation was blocked in the gardens.

The only thing left to do was to assign various mobs to the appropriate sections and after quick consideration and keeping in mind that most adventurers would only be able to spend three to four hours in the last area I decided against adding new creatures with one notable mushroom.

The deception mushroom had several subtypes like zap mushroom that would store static electricity and discharge it all at once upon contact, sleep mushroom that when collected would release a spore that should put anyone to sleep for few minutes or stinking mushroom that once pulled out turned into vomit-inducing sludge. The most damaging would be the prickly mushroom that on the slightest touch would explode and send a shrapnel of tiny pricks in every direction. It would hardly injure anyone but F or E graded adventurers but its purpose was to shred all valuable mushrooms nearby, making them either worthless or severely damaged. Additionally, with the rules proposed by Areth, it would have a long-lasting effect of increasing the time after which all those affected mushrooms would reappear in the garden.

As we wanted to test gatherers’ knowledge and skills we decided that each deception mushroom would have at least one flaw that should allow them to be identified, be it wrong colour of dots or its absence, growing on tree when it should be near the sandy riverbank or simply being present in area it shouldn’t appear. I believed the last one to be the hardest to resist as I could easily imagine adventurers getting all excited for tier 4 ingredient in the second area and rushing to pick it up only to fall for the trap.

To avoid making collecting resources triviality I assigned garden centipedes to all areas, making sure they were travelling in groups of two to four joined by the light variant in the second area and a guardian centipede in the final area. If too many people decide to swim through the rivers instead of using the bridges I may add some water mobs but for now, I decided it wasn’t worth it and I really wanted to save them more the main dungeon.

I was unsure if I should add a recipe to every chest for few weeks or the exact ratio of recipes compared to the alchemic pills which were equivalent to blacksmithing blueprints for potion makers. In the end, I postponed making that call until after Nicolas's team assessed the garden as they should arrive in a few hours. I am perfectly capable of waiting patiently despite those ridiculous claims Areth kept making. I will just contact them quickly as Maisoon didn't answer any of my ten mental probes in the past hour and now I can't even reach him... strange.